Security in Space The Next Generation - UNIDIR

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States have pledged to implement within national licensing or other
applicable mechanisms “to the greatest extent feasible”. The threat of rising
debris levels will continue to be posed through growth in the number of
space actors and space missions in the future, the potential use of kineticforce
technologies against objects in space, and the process of debris collision
and fragmentation that occurs naturally in the space environment.
OPERATING IN OUTER SPACE: LIMITED MONITORING
Space surveillance capabilities are vital to the mitigation of environmental
hazards such as space debris, as well for creating greater transparency and
confi dence in space activities. There is no international space surveillance
mechanism or catalogue of objects, but several states have developed
discrete capabilities. The United States possesses the most advanced
surveillance system, which tracks over 17,000 objects larger than 10cm
in diameter. Russia maintains a space surveillance capacity through its
early-warning radars, and France and Germany have national capabilities
through the Grande Réseau Adapté à la Veille Spatiale system and the
Forschungsgesellschaft für Angewandte Naturwissenschaften Tracking and
Imaging Radar, respectively. Canada, China, Japan, Ukraine and the United
Kingdom are all developing independent space surveillance capabilities.
Details of these systems as indicated through public sources are given in
Table 2.
The capabilities that have been developed to date are limited in terms of
the size of objects that can be observed in outer space at different altitudes,
and in terms of the international availability of the data. The next generation
will require both better space situational awareness capabilities, and better
sharing. This is due both to the inevitable growth of space debris, as well
as the need for greater transparency of space activities, which are naturally
marked by a degree of uncertainty. This uncertainty increases risks to space
security as more actors with more advanced capabilities enter outer space,
challenging both abilities to monitor space traffi c, and potentially creating
an environment of fear and mistrust.